Ode to Valentine's Day

Valentine's Day at our house is a simple one. A lovely family dinner with candles and homemade valentines for all. Period. The kids are all still on sugar-highs from classroom parties with cupcakes, cookies, ice cream, and tons of candy valentines - I can hear them running around outside in the wind, playing and screaming like banshees.

I am not a huge fan of Valentine's Day in the "Hallmark - Every Kiss Begins with Kay" kind of way, but one of the things I like to think about on Valentine's Day is poetry.  Poetry is one of my great loves - words that convey emotions, simple stanzas with deep meaning.  Love written about in poetry is simple too. It can transcend time and place. Love (and poetry) doesn't cost any money, wither in a few days, or put on any extra pounds.  One of my favorite poets is E.E. Cummings.  He doesn't use poem titles, capital letters or conventional stanza form - read on...
 

i carry your heart with me (i carry it in
my heart) i am never without it (anywhere
i go you go, my dear; and whatever is done
by only me is your doing, my darling)
                                  i fear
no fate (for you are my fate, my sweet) i want
no world (for beautiful you are my world, my true)
and it's you are whatever a moon has always meant
and whatever a sun will always sing is you

here is the deepest secret nobody knows
(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud
and the sky of the sky of a tree called life; which grows
higher than the soul can hope or mind can hide)
and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart

i carry your heart (i carry it in my heart)

Have a Happy Valentine's Day...whatever you carry in your heart today!
...and remember the three words women love to hear most:
"I'll clean up." :-)

Birthdays and Deathdays

I don't do 'deathdays'. I am putting that out there right now. I do not like acknowledging the anniversaries of death.  I don't even know that exact day my dad died.  I didn't like that day, nope - not in the least - so I don't spend any time remembering it.  Phooey on you, August somewhere-in-the-teens!  At the very most, I give a cool nod to the passing of another year and go on about my business.  It is just a date.

Now birthdays, on the other hand, are a different animal altogether.  My dad's birthday is today, February 11.  And we just celebrated my brother, Tim's 40th birthday (January 29th) and my sister-in-law, Kim's (February 1st). Birthdays are cool. Although birthdays are just a 'date' too, they are the universally accepted beginning date of this life that we now know.  Beginnings are full of potential, the sky is the limit, the world is your oyster type of stuff. We all start on the level playing field of newborn babydom on our birthdays - mewling little bundles of life and spirit.

Ask any mother about birthdays, you most likely receive a story in amazing detail.  I remember asking my late-grandmother about the day my dad was born. Instantly, she smiled and sat up a little straighter - recalling amazing details about that day in 1943, like she was still a giddy new mom.  Those days are tattooed on the brains of mothers.  Birthdays are some good days in life.

I like to think about my dad on his birthday. We would be celebrating with possibly some Key Lime Pie or Carrot Cake. He was an amazing person - wonderful dad, friend, counselor, dreamer, sailor, and fighter. I could write a book about what he was and still is to me. I read the lyrics to a song and it seemed to fit him perfectly...

"And although I may not

Know all the answers

I can finally say I am free

And if the questions

Lead me here, then

I am who I was born to be"

Who are you going to be? Your birthday is the beginning of your story - on Earth, right now. Having said that, ironically I don't believe that death is the end of your story either.   It may be an end to a chapter. It may be another beginning. Whatever you believe about life and hereafter, try to make your story  - on Earth, right now - the best one possible.  Dream! Live! Love! Carpe Diem!

Dad, Happy Birthday - I love you!